At least, so he told himself, he would not seek her out (he had her address from Fannie Lemick) until he had something to show for his new life—­until, possibly, he had a copy of that magazine which was still a hypothesis and a chimera.  Then he would nerve himself and go to her and she should judge him as she pleased.

That first supper with his mother had a sweetness new to their lives.  He ran out to the butcher, the grocer, and the delicatessen man, and came home laden with packages.  The stove in the rear kitchen was set alight; the wooden table in the center was spread with cloth and cutlery; and they sat down opposite each other, utterly alone ... no boarding—­house flutter and gossip and noise, no unpleasant jarring personalities, no wholesale cookery.  All was quiet and peace—­a brooding, tinkling silence.  They both smiled and smiled, their eyes moist, and the food tasted so good.  Blessed bread that they broke together, the cup that they shared between them!  The moment became sacred, human, stirred by all the old, old miraculousness of home, that deepest need of humanity, that rich relationship that cuts so much deeper than the light touch-and-go of the world.

Joe spoke awkwardly.

“So we’re here, mother ... and it’s ripping, isn’t it?”

She could hardly speak, but her eyes seemed to sparkle with a second youth.

“Yes,” she murmured, “it’s the first time we’ve had anything like this since you were a boy.”

They both thought of his father, and the vanished days of the shanty on the hillside, and his mother thought: 

“People must live out their own lives in their own homes.”

There was something that fed the roots of her woman-nature to have this place apart, this quiet shelter where she ruled.  It would be a joy to go marketing, it would be a delight to cook, and it was charming to live so intimately with her son.  They were a family again.

After supper they washed the dishes together, laughing and chatting.  There were a hundred pleasing details to consider—­where to place furniture, what to buy, whether to have a servant or not (Joe insisted on one), and all the incidents of the day to go over.

And then after the dish-washing they stopped work, and sat down in the front office amid the packing-cases and the trunks and the litter and debris.  The gas was lighted above them, and the old-fashioned stove which stood in the center and sprouted up a pipe nearly to the ceiling and then at right angles into the wall was made red-hot with wood and coal.  Joe smoked and his mother sewed, and a hush seemed to fall on the city, broken only by the echo of passing footsteps and the mellowed thunder of the intermittent trolley-cars.

“And they call this a slum,” muttered Joe.

In fact, save possibly for less clear air and in the summer a noise of neighbors, they might have been living in New York’s finest neighborhood—­almost a disappointment to two people prepared to plunge into dirt, danger, and disease....  Later Joe learned that some of the city’s magazine writers had settled in the district on purpose, not because they were meeting a crisis, but because they liked it, liked its quaint old flavor, its colorful life, its alien charm, and not least, its cheaper rents.